The first police involved shooting of the year occurred hours after midnight when police responded to a report of shots fired in an ally in the University District. I’m not post to discuss the events that occurred but rather our reactions to them. More and more frequently I am getting my local news from neighborhood blogs. Their stories are often more inclusive and detailed than the papers, but they are not held to the same accountability which I think is the mortar supporting the foundation against the demise of the printed press.
The Phinney Wood blog provided a link to the suspect’s myspace page as well as to related news articles. With the over-saturation and hyper coverage of news in our culture I’ve been more compelled to troll through the comments of major news articles despite it’s lack of productivity. I wanted to share two comments from this event that I found interesting.

Amazing how many people can jump to a conclusion, and base their opinions, on such limited information. According to the article “They were shooting rifles in the alley”, “A neighbor heard the cops tell him to drop the weapon”, and the cops stated that the subject pointed the rifle at one of them. Reminds me of the time a subject crushed a mans head through a mirror and left him unconsicous in a public restroom. I arrived, yes I am a Seattle Police Officer, and I had to try and arrest the subject, who was obviously violent, and mentally ill. A fight ensued and a crowd of mostly people gathered around to shout, “Police brutality!” I knew the subject, from previous contacts, so I told him, “Ok, John! Tell you what. You get away from that guy, and I’ll let you go.” I then threw my hand cuffs at a male, in a suit and tie, and said, “Ok, since you know all about fighting combative subjects, you arrest him!” The subject stopped fighting and grinned, while staring at the suit. He also growled at him and showed his teeth. The suit ran away, and the crowd gave applause. The subject was so amused he gave up, got cuffed, and sat into the back of the patrol car. So my challenge is this. To all those people, who are so quick to tell a cop how to do their job. JOIN UP! “Be the change you wish to see in the world!” Or at the very least, do a ride-a-long. Then, when someone points a weapon at us, jump in front of the cop(s). Show us what a wonderful job you’d do. And TomR, whomever you are, think what you want, but know this. If you called SPD, and someone was threatening to kill you, the cops would put themselves between you and the threat. Regardless of what you think of them… Would you do the same for a citizen?

If this story is true, which it may not fully be its a good glimpse of the sad lives of our society in which we stand around like audiences to the gladiators. Organized sports no longer fill the void of chaos and savagery that it once did so we applaud an officers efforts to entertain us while we watch with disparaging tongue and wit.

The next comment sums up our collective world view on recent tragic events. I hope the families of all those involved return to a stable sense of normalcy sooner than later.

So I guess the tone I get from these posts on the Seattle Times is, if you’re a young African American teenager and are murdered or are shot and wounded, you had it coming because of the lifestyle you led. There is no benefit of the doubt and some people on here go so far as to post a link to the teenager’s Myspace page. This paper will detail a criminal history of a young black African American teenager to outline why his death happened. Additionally, when a teenager is killed, people here want to blame the parents and always ask where they were at the time of the incident and wonder why they didn’t do a better job of upbringing.
Yet, a UW student answers the door with a gun in his hand and is shot by Seattle Police and he has all the shadow of doubt in the world and it is considered a tragedy. If you doubt what I say, look back at the tone of the responses to these stories and read for yourself. It disgusts me to no end. Nonetheless, I think no matter who you are or how smart and charming you are and how good of a tipper you are, if you point a functional firearm at a Seattle Police officer, you run the risk of being shot. People have been shot for far less and I am sure, that knowing the victim spoke 3 languages or was a history buff was not a factor to consider when they discharged their weapons. All they saw was the business end of a weapon pointed at them. Far be it from me to condone the actions of Seattle Police but where is the wrongdoing in this?

Human beings by nature are social animals. In my previous profession I found myself surrounded by the proclaimed A type personalities. I my self have never identified well with that spectrum. Though I tend to be outgoing and personable, I find the whole macho thing rather disconcerting. Following my separation from military service I found myself embedded in the cubicle office culture of the aerospace industry. Surrounding my three grey walls were the desks of aerospace engineers. Still, I enjoyed the silence, the NPR, and the jazz in the bathrooms I could not get over the extreme lack of social skills. Thus the B type personalities. I always figured that I had become more aggressive, assertive, and more masculine in my twenties due to father hood and war. I always assumed that I would eventually settle back into the more easy going passive self I was before. Apparently I am neither completely A or B, which like many things in life tends to be a bit more pragmatic.

In my new profession I find many similarities between myself and coworkers. There are those too aggressive and some a bit reserved, but all in all there seems to be a great balance. The other day I realized how much I appreciated saying good morning to people and actually have them return they greeting and make solid eye contact, a feat seldom accomplished in an office environment. Surrounded by people with solid social skills is new to me. There are still the few in lacking, and a few overly boisterous, but the ratio is far more acute than anywhere I’ve ever been.

This morning I came across this almost ten minute video that nearly made me late. As I have discussed with a friend of mine reading the news on the internet and sorting through rss feeds can have devastating effects on our work ethic specifically our timeliness that morning. This video made me appreciate all of the people I have ever worked with. The meek, the sheik, the geek, the lazy, the inept, and that douche bag that seems to reside in a portion of everyone’s lives, whether he be in sales your neighbor, or brother in law.

Though I disagree with the legality and ethics of the mentioned police tactics, I had to share what one of the comments had to say that I felt was particularly interesting.

Most folks don’t appreciate the psychologically caustic environment that police, particularly those on the street in dense urban areas, have to deal with day in and day out. It’s easy to be on the outside and judge, and most of them do have a gritty quality that rubs folks the wrong way, but that is the same quality that enables them to perform a very necessary function for society.
If you dont believe me, go work in a slaughterhouse for a week killing animals three times your body mass. When you can’t walk through a meat isle at the grocer without a sense of recollection, you will have an tangible example of what I mean. -Crazy Cooter

What I love about the internet and especially Youtube, is finding other people’s cutting and pastings of my same obsessions scattered throughout the hyper text and script. All too often in pop culture we forget our infatuations that feel as our own are in fact shared by potentially millions of people. Unless of course you’re into American Idol or something, then of course you probably wouldn’t understand at all what I’m talking about.

When your forces are dulled, your edge is blunted, your strength is exhausted, and your supplies are gone, then others will take advantage of your debility and rise up. Then even if you have wise advisers you cannot make things turn out well in the end.

Therefore I have heard of military operations that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen one that was skillful and lasted a long time. It is never beneficial to a nation to have a military operation continue for a long time.

-Sun Tzu

flickr: soldier’s media center

For us time is a relative term. We live in a world of thirty second commercial bites and hour long mini dramas. Our national attention span rarely exceed the next presidential election. How could we haver possible consider our place in the world objectively? Isn’t easier to assume that if the nightly news doesn’t cover it, that it’s not happening? To the overwhelming majority that now seek resolution if not consummation, have they too been deemed the people who will always object to everything?

My neighborhood was established around the turn of the century. Is this a long time ago when you consider the four to hundred year old buildings on our New England coast? Does even our oldest settlements measure up to the castile walls, provincial parks, and villages in Europe measure in centuries over years? Will we sustain the next five years of these modern wars? We’re still established in places ravaged by a war over a half century old. Can a long time have any meaning in a fickle society such as ours?

“When you do battle, even if you are winning, if you continue for a long time it will dull your forces and blunt your edge; if you besiege a citadel, your strength will be exhausted. If you keep your armies out in the field for a long time, your supplies will be insufficient.” -Sun Tzu
flickr: soldier’s media center

It is apparent that the US death toll in the Global War on Terrorism and the subsequent occupation of iraq has increased exponentially since our self declared victory. There is no way to win an occupation. The wars have dragged on for over five years. I’ve heard the elderly lament that their country is engaged in yet another war, usually five by their count in a lifetime not including the countless operations we have perpetually been engaged in.

Through our endless campaigns abroad and domestic protests we may never truly comprehend the type of warfare that once ravaged our species. Wars that have spanned generations rather than years. Sadly warfare is the one attribute that mankind excels at. We are the product of our own demise. It’s going to happen no matter what you do, no matter how much you think you know.

“War is like a fire – if you do not put it out, it will burn itself out.” -Li Quan